From Evangeline Hot Sauce to Cajun Ice: Signs of Ethnicity in South Louisiana

By Barry Jean Ancelet

An exchange of email information
during the last year on regional place names and ethnic identification
raised some interesting issues. What kind of markers do people
use to publicly identify and express their cultural or ethnic
identity? How do these markers work, both within the community
and without? Are there layers of meaning hidden under the intended
surface? Roland Barthes indicated "as soon as there is a
society, every usage is converted into a sign of itself"
(Barthes 1968: 41). Umberto Eco developed the notion of architectural
connotation exploring the attachment of meaning to form and function
(Eco 1986: 64). Semiotic studies of cities and societies inspired
by these notions generally focus on architecture and urban development
as forms of symbolic language and social expression. This paper
focuses on the symbolic language and social expression of actual
signs, the kind businesses use to identify themselves
to the public, with the notion that such a public display of
ethnicity may tell us something about the community in which
this occurs.

Crispy Cajun has several locations in south Louisiana. Photo: Barry Jean Ancelet.

Names, of course, can carry
important cultural messages. In South Louisiana, even personal
names can act as a cultural barometer. During the Americanization
of the Cajuns in the early part of this century which included,
among other things, the banishment of the French language from
schools and upwardly-mobile society, for example, French-speaking
parents typically gave their children English first names and
French middle names, thus retaining a certain ethnic connection
but hiding it under a protective layer. This paper will examine
another South Louisiana naming practice in the world of business.
Using the business listings in telephone books, as well as photographs
of the contemporary street scene, this paper will explore the
evolution of overt ethnic and cultural identification in the
signs displayed by businesses in Cajun country, tracing the movement
from Evangeline to Acadian to Acadia to
Acadiana to Cajun and finally to the emerging use
of the French language. An American Folklife Center sponsored
team of researchers coordinated by C. Ray Brassieur documented
similar public expressions of culture and ethnicity among the
northern Acadians in the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey, for the
National Park Service (1992).

Evangeline Maid Bread. Photo: Barry Jean Ancelet.

The ethnic evolution of the
Louisiana Cajuns has been well documented (Brasseaux 1987 and
1992; Dormon 1983; Rushton 1979; Allain and Rickels, in Conrad
1978). The Acadians arrived in Louisiana between 1765 and 1785,
after having been exiled by the British in 1755 from what had
become Nova Scotia. There they created a complex new society
for themselves, incorporating influences from their French, Spanish,
German, British American, Scottish, Irish, African, and Native
American neighbors. This new society continued to be called cadien
in French, but in English it came to be called Cajun. In
English the term had a variety of connotations, especially the
negative one meaning "poor white French-speaking trash."
Ironically, it is this English term that has now come to be known
nationally and internationally, especially through the popularity
of the culture's food and music. While cadien remains
what these people simply call themselves in French, the term
Cajun has only recently (since the 1970s) been considered widely
presentable in public, and this for specific, traceable reasons.

Evangleine Laundromat, Baton Rouge. Photo: Maida Owens.

The negative self-image that
emerged among many Cajuns around the turn of this century was
due to several factors: the arrival of British American grain farmers
from the Midwest in the late 19th century, the arrival
of British American oil developers primarily from Pennsylvania,
Texas, and Oklahoma beginning in 1901, the nationalism which
preceded and accompanied World War I, and the leveling effects
of the Great Depression. Following World War II, this trend was
reversed, eventually to the creation of the Council for the Development
of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) in 1968 and producing a new
generation of Cajuns interested in preserving the culture and
language of their heritage. This evolution, which can be heard
in the music and oral tradition of the Cajuns (Dormon 1983; Ancelet
1984, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, and 1994), and tasted in their food
(Gutierrez 1992), can also be seen in the way the Cajuns identify
themselves publicly in signs, especially those with a connection
to the music, food, and tourism industries.

The first ethnic identity
marker to be considered publicly acceptable was Evangeline, referring
to the heroine of Longfellow's epic poem of the same name. Louisiana
historian Mathé Allain speculated that Evangeline was
considered safe first because of the Americans' clearly expressed
appreciation for the romantic nineteenth-century poem (Allain
1983) and later because of the tourism factor (Brasseaux 1988;
Ancelet 1982). The first Lafayette telephone book in 1906 already
listed an Evangeline Oil Company, a branch office of the company
that first struck oil near Jennings in a field also named after
the errant heroine. (I chose Lafayette for the telephone book
survey because of its position as Cajun country's major urban
center, more radically affected by the oil-driven booms than
other small cities in the area, bringing to bear influences from
both inside and outside the culture.) During the 1930s, interest
in Evangeline was reinvigorated by the release in 1929 of the
silent film classic of the same title starring Dolores Del Rio.
By the early 1940s, the number of Evangeline listings
had jumped to eight as new businesses were added to the subsequent
phone books. This number held fairly steady, creeping up to 11
by the mid-1950s. Then between 1955 and 1966, the number shot
up to 20. Two factors coincided to produce this jump. First,
many new businesses were created as a result of the migration
of rural folks to towns during the years following World War
II. Second, an ethnic revival was in the making led by local
politicians such as Dudley LeBlanc, who organized a bicentennial
celebration of the survival of Cajun culture centered upon a
return to Nova Scotia in 1955. This new consciousness is reflected
in the increase in the number of businesses sporting the name
of the matron saint of the Acadians. Interestingly, however,
this number did not continue to rise significantly. By 1976,
there were only 25 Evangeline businesses. By 1983, at
the height of one of the biggest oil-driven economic booms in
the area's history, that number only reached 27, and by 1996,
it had fallen to 19. Thus, while Evangeline was the first
ethnic code word used in business signs, it did not retain its
position of importance compared to other code words that emerged
later representing different social and cultural bases and dynamics.

Another word to become associated
with the public expression of ethnicity is Acadian, first
appearing in the 1930s, coinciding with Louisiana Senator Dudley
J. LeBlanc's first forays back to the Acadian maritime provinces
of Canada. Throughout most of the 1940s and up to 1955, there
were two or three Acadian listings in Lafayette. By 1960,
the number had jumped to nine and it continued to climb steadily
to 38 by 1976, shooting past Evangeline. The name Acadian
apparently sounded a resonant note in the early Louisiana French
renaissance movement, marked by the establishment of the Council
for the Development of French in Louisiana in 1968. By 1983,
that number had almost doubled to 60. Yet, in 1996 that rise
had leveled off with the number falling slightly to 59.

The term Acadia emerged
for the first time in the business listings in 1963. Psychologically,
this may have represented a slightly more radical expression
of ethnicity, one that carried a territorial connotation, involving
the lost homeland of the Acadian exiles. There were no more than
two Acadia listings until 1974 when the number crept up
to four. In 1983, there were only eleven; by 1996 that number
had fallen to six.

Interestingly, another term
that also connotes territory has become by far the most popular
ethnic code among Lafayette business listings today. The word
Acadiana, a combination of Acadia and Louisiana, was coined
by local television personalities such as Floyd Cormier and Bill
McGoffin to help define the coverage area of their new television
station, KATC-TV 3, the local ABC affiliate established in the
early 1960s. Acadiana first appeared as a business listing
as early as 1964, only one year after the first appearance of
Acadia, but the number of listings rose steadily to reach
double digits at 10 in 1969. By 1976, there were 58 businesses
with Acadiana in their names. By 1983, there were 144,
and in 1996 there were 175. It is interesting to consider the
reasons that Acadiana caught on while Acadia did
not. The linguistic fusion Acadiana represents the successful
contemporary integration of Acadian culture in Louisiana. As
such, it is a clear affirmation of the status quo rather than
a subtle threat. And it looks forward rather than backward. Ironically,
it is also untranslatable into French.

One year after the first
public appearance of the term Acadiana, the term Cajun
made its debut with a single listing in 1965. In 1968, the year
that CODOFIL was established, the number had reached only three.
During the early 1970s, the number seemed to peak out in the
low teens. By 1976, it had slipped to eight. But in 1983, there
were 34 Cajun business listings, and the number continues
to rise. In 1996, there were 50 (including two spelled with a
K). The difficulty this term had in taking root early on was
very likely due to its problematic nature in English, especially
within the African American community for whom it connotes little
more than "poor white French-speaking trash" and for
whom it was often the responding insult to hurtful words hurled
in their direction, roughly the counterpart of "nigger."
Interestingly, the word Cadien in French had virtually
no negative value, being simply the word used by Cajuns to describe
themselves. Cadien is not a factor in this discussion
since the French term is not used in what is primarily an English-based
commercial world. The few references to this group in French
signage has typically borrowed the English spelling, e.g., the
National Park Service sponsored "Rendez-vous des Cajuns"
weekly radio in program in Eunice's Liberty Theater.

Among the first to attempt
to rehabilitate the term was the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
The sports teams' mascot was the bulldog, but during the rise
of USL's basketball program to national prominence during the
late 1960s and early 1970s, some clever sportcasters nicknamed
the teams first the Frenchmen, then the Ragin' Cajuns. The latter
moniker stuck with the administration of newly appointed President
Ray Authement, himself a Cajun from nearby Terrebonne Parish.
On campus, the new married student housing complex was named
Cajun Village. And usage naturally spilled over from campus.
The first Cajun listing was in fact a popular local bar named
the Ragin' Cajun.

Despite this new popularity,
the term remained for many a loaded one. On campus, sports staffers
strained to formulate a visual image of this Ragin' Cajun to
serve as a mascot. The emerging faction of proud Cajuns resisted
ideas which would demean their ethnicity (such as swamper attire).
Eventually, university officials compromised with the past, opting
for two bulldogs, one named Ragin' and the other, Cajun. The
university's sports facilities, including Cajun Field and the
Cajun Dome, were also baptized with the name.

Today the word Cajun has
been "rehabilitated" to the point that it is even overused.
Fueled by such factors as tourism, it is applied to everything
and anything, producing some remarkable juxtapositions [Cajun
Credit, Cajun Daiquiries, Green's Cajun Mart, Cajun Deli, Cajun
Egg Rolls] and other clever uses [Reagan Cajun and K. Jon Portable
Toilets]. One can even go fishing in a Cajun-brand boat, with
Cajun-brand ice in the ice chest and Cajun-brand crickets for
bait. National chains jumped on the band wagon to produce such
dubious new products as Burger King's Cajun Whaler (its fish
sandwich patty dipped in crab boil), Pizza Inn's New Orleans
Style Cajun Pizza (featuring cayenne and andouille sausage) and
Pabst Brewery's Cajun brand beer (spiked with cayenne). Many
area restaurants now feel compelled to identify themselves as
Cajun restaurants. All of this self-consciousness once prompted
musician, instrument maker, and local sage Marc Savoy to answer
a reporter's question, "Are you sorry the Cajuns have been
discovered?" with "I'm sorrier the Cajuns have discovered
themselves." Beyond Savoy's quip, this frantic self-identification
may indeed be symptomatic of a fear of drowning in the American
mainstream. The term is also often diluted by its misapplication
to things that come from other elements of Louisiana's cultural
blend, and appropriation by other non-Cajun areas of Louisiana,
such as New Orleans, for its perceived touristic benefit. An
off-Bourbon strip club even claimed on a sidewalk sign to feature
"nearly nude Cajun dancing girls."

Some members of the black
Creole community are especially sensitive to this flood of interest
and have begun to protest being left out of the cultural credit
line. The rather unsubtle un-Cajun protest was refined by groups
such as C.R.E.O.L.E., Inc. whose campaign seeks to encourage
the inclusion of black Creoles instead of the exclusion of the
Cajuns. During the years when the Cajuns were struggling for
cultural and social equality, many black Creoles were involved
in the Civil Rights movement. It was not until recently, once
Jim Crow was dismantled to the point that no one really noticed
anymore from what water fountain a person drinks, that the black
Creoles began to feel that they could afford the luxury of exploring
and enhancing the French and Creole sides of their heritage.
Though the term Creole was widely used in the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-centuries to describe locally produced products
(cattle, horses, mules, vegetables, shoes, etc.) and slaves born
in the area, it was dropped as a commercial reference throughout
most of the twentieth century and only reappeared in the business
listings in the 1980s. There were five in 1983; there are the
same number today. There remains considerable uneasiness over
the public image of the term Cajun, symptomatic in part
of the negative value ascribed to the word Cajun, especially
among black Creoles.

The slur coonass,
a derogatory reference to Cajuns whose origins are unsure, is
apparently too openly vulgar and offensive to be found in business
listings, since it has never appeared there, and still does not.
Yet some Cajuns display the word in other kinds of public signs
including hats, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and license plates.
Some of these try to take the sting out of the insult by using
it themselves and turning it into a "smile-when-you-say-that"
term, while others have simply internalized the negative values
it conveys about their own culture and identity.

In addition to self-ascribed
code words (from Evangeline and Acadian to Cajun),
other cultural icons can also intensify the message in signs.
Some, such as oak trees, are locally generated and linked to
the Evangeline mythology and its heirs. Emmeline LaBiche, erroneously
thought to be the prototype for the Evangeline character, is
said to have waited for her beau (Louis Arceneaux) under an oak
tree and thus it has become a cultural symbol for faithfulness
and endurance. Other symbols are imported, but have undergone
radical redefinition. The fleur-de-lys, for example, formerly
a symbol of the French monarchy and occasionally of quality or
excellence (Ballinger and Ballinger 16), is now used by the historically
populist Cajuns (Brasseaux 1987 and 1992; Dormon 1983) simply
as a sign of French-ness. Crowns, another symbol of monarchy
turned symbol of excellence (Ballinger and Ballinger 88-89),
are also ironically used and confused with Cajun identity, perhaps
influenced by Huey Long, the immensely popular and populist former
governor of Louisiana who declared "every man a king."
There is also the possibility that the tradition of Mardi Gras
"royalty" in urban centers such as New Orleans, Houma,
and Lafayette may have contributed to the use of crowns and the
vocabulary of royalty as cultural references.

The most recent trend in
the public expression of ethnicity among the Cajuns has been
the use of the French language in signs. This language, which
previously had been considered a social liability, is now increasingly
considered an important cultural identity marker and a source
of pride (Ancelet 1988). Predictably, these French language signs
can be a problem for the generations of Cajuns who were not allowed
even to speak French at school, much less learn to read and write
it. Sometimes business owners weigh in on the side of the trend,
but without taking a real chance (e.g., Le Stitchery/Le Video
Store). But as this trend evolves, the spelling is corrected
and the process is refined (Le Café des Artistes, etc.).

Businesses using French in
their signs and advertisements tend to be upscale: schools and
daycare establishments, restaurants, arts-related enterprises,
and the offices of doctors and lawyers. Since the use of signs
is an important part of attracting attention to potential customers,
business sense usually tempers linguistic fervor to produce signs
in which the name of the business is in French, spoken by a significant
part of the population and now considered the emerging chic,
but the message is usually in English, the language read by all.
There are, however, a few bold examples that double the message
or even reverse this pattern. And recently, local governments
at the city and parish levels have begun to commit themselves
as well to Louisiana's other official language. These messages
in what used to be the "problem language" represent
what is perhaps the most daring, overt statement yet of a cultural
self-image which continues to evolve in South Louisiana.

Rushton, William Faulkner.
1979. The Cajuns: From Acadia to Louisiana. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

This article was originally published in the 1996 issue of the Louisiana
Folklore Miscellany and is reprinted with permission. Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet teaches folklore and French in the Department of Modern Languages at
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.